Ogdensburg – Maquam railway line
The Ogdensburg – Maquam railway is a railway line in New York and Vermont ( United States ). It is 211 kilometers long and connects the cities of Ogdensburg , Norwood , Malone , Chateaugay , Mooers , Champlain , Alburgh and Maquam , among others . Most of the line has been closed, only the section from Ogdensburg to Norwood is still operated by the New York and Ogdensburg Railway in freight traffic.
history
Construction of the route to Rouses Point
On May 14, 1845, the Northern Railroad of New York was founded to build a railroad between St. Lawrence River and Lake Champlain . The company was formally set up on June 15, 1846, and began construction on the line the following year from Rouses Point on Lake Champlain. In November 1849 the first section of the route to Centerville (Mooers Forks) was opened. Ellenburg was reached in May 1850, Chateauguay in June, Malone in August and on October 1, 1850 the entire route from Rouses Point to Ogdensburg finally went into operation. On January 6, 1858, the railway company was reorganized as Ogdensburg Railroad after bankruptcy, and as Ogdensburg and Lake Champlain Railroad (O&LC) on June 10, 1864 after bankruptcy again . From March 1, 1870, the Vermont Central Railroad , renamed Central Vermont Railroad (CV) shortly thereafter , leased the railway line. She had built the Essex Junction – Rouses Point railway line and was able to run her trains to Ogdensburg.
Lamoille Valley Extension Railroad
In the early 1870s, O&LC sought to extend its route towards the Atlantic, which was to become part of the planned connection from Portland (Maine) to Chicago. On October 25, 1872, the O&LC received the concession for an extension to Swanton , up to where other concessions for the entire route from Portland had been awarded. She founded the Lamoille Valley Extension Railroad for this route , which should be leased when it opened. Some sections of the route from Portland were already open or under construction at that time. From the beginning, the CV objected to the construction of this route, which was supposed to be parallel to its own route. The lease agreement with CV was canceled in 1878 for financial reasons and O&LC now operated its main route under its own control. The year before, the entire route from Portland to Swanton had been opened, which was extended to Maquam on the east bank of Lake Champlain in 1880. Now O&LC wanted to connect its own series in Maquam in order to avoid an objection from the CV. On February 28, 1883, construction began on the extension and on November 27, 1883, the extension to Maquam went into operation. Regular traffic began on January 1, 1884.
By the summer of 1884, the CV board secretly gradually acquired larger shares in O&LC. At the shareholders' meeting on June 18 of that year, the previous board of directors of O&LC was voted out of office and replaced by someone close to CV. On July 1, 1884, the new board decided to dissolve the lease with the Lamoille Valley Extension Railroad. Since the railway company was not viable on its own, it ceased operations on the route between Rouses Point and Maquam, but did not apply for closure. Since the CV wanted to eliminate the possible competition, it first leased O&LC again on June 1, 1886 and finally bought the Lamoille Valley Extension Railroad on December 7, 1887. At the beginning of 1888 it closed the extension that had only opened four years earlier and dismantled it. The lease with CV was dissolved again in 1896.
Further development
O&LC had to struggle with financial problems again in the 1890s and was reorganized as the Ogdensburg and Lake Champlain Railway on November 30, 1898 . The Rutland Railroad had acquired shares in the company and finally merged with her on November 27, 1901. From then on, she operated the route to Ogdensburg. The Rutland had opened its own line to Rouses Point in early 1901 and the trains from Ogdensburg now ran to Alburgh. Since this new route was also parallel to the CV route, the CV now had new competition on this section. In the meantime, however, other transport routes have had higher priority.
As on the entire Rutland network, passenger traffic was stopped between Ogdensburg and Rouses Point on June 26, 1953 after a strike. After another strike, freight traffic also ended on September 25, 1961. Rutland applied for the shutdown of its entire network in December, which was approved on September 18, 1962. Since this closure would have left the port of Ogdensburg without a railway connection, the Ogdensburg Bridge and Port Authority bought the section from Ogdensburg to Norwood, where there was a connection to a main line of the New York Central Railroad . It has operated this section since 1967 under the name New York and Ogdensburg Railway (NYOG). On April 9, 2002, NYOG was acquired by the Vermont Rail System , which also operates several other former Rutland routes.
Route description
The line begins on the banks of the St. Lawrence River in the port of Ogdensburg, where there was no track connection to other railway lines. Today it is the only remaining rail link in the city. The railway line leaves the city eastward and runs through sparsely populated, flat area over 40 kilometers to Norwood. On the way there, the railway crosses the Grass River near Madrid and the Raquette River shortly before Norwood . In contrast to most of the US hub stations, Norwood station is not designed as a track crossing, but from the start there was a shared station with parallel tracks. The next junction station, Moira, which is located at route kilometer 75, was also constructed in this way, but is now completely out of service. From Norwood the line is closed and the tracks are dismantled. The route crosses the Saint Regis River near Winthrop . The bridge was demolished after the line was closed.
The route reaches the town of Malone after a total of 98 kilometers. The trains of the New York Central Railroad , whose route passed east of the city, used the route from the track crossing to Malone station. In the city, the railway line also crosses the Salmon River . In the city area, the route was partially built over after the closure. In the further course near the Canadian border, the railway line crosses the river of the same name near Chateauguay, which runs in a deep valley cut. Originally the valley was spanned here with a large wooden yoke bridge, but after a few years it was filled in to form a dam. Only a narrow passage remained for the river.
From Churubusco to Clinton Mills, the railway line is now used by a road. The former rail connection to a quarry continues to be used for the removal of the excavated material by truck. Even in the further course between Irona and Altona you can drive on the old railway line with road vehicles today. From Altona the route follows the Great Chazy River . It takes you through the towns of Mooers, where a branch of the Delaware and Hudson Railroad once crossed, and Champlain. After a total of 188 kilometers, the Rouses Point junction is reached. This is where the New York – Montréal highway crosses. Here there were track connections to the CV line to Essex Junction and the Rutland line to Burlington, which began here and also led in an easterly direction.
The route, which had been dismantled from here since 1888, continued eastwards and over a flat yoke bridge over Lake Champlain. The bridge was only a few meters north of the CV route. Here the route also crosses the border to Vermont. West of Alburgh, the route initially crosses the CV route and the Rutland route, which was only opened in 1901. Shortly before Alburgh train station, it crosses the Rutland route again and then runs right next to the CV route eastwards to East Alburgh. An extension of Lake Champlain had to be crossed here. The bridge ran at an acute angle and a few meters south of the CV line bridge, which is still used today. On the eastern bank was the West Swanton stop, where the train turns in a south-easterly direction to run along the banks of Lake Champlain Maquam Bay to Maquam terminus, which also served the Lunenburg – Maquam railway , which was completed in 1880 .
Sources and further information
- Individual evidence
- ↑ Mike Walker: Comprehensive Railroad Atlas of North America. Northeast. SPV-Verlag, Dunkirk (GB), 2007.
- ↑ Mike Walker: Comprehensive Railroad Atlas of North America. New England & Maritime Canada. SPV-Verlag, Dunkirk (GB), 2010.
- ^ Official notice from the Vermont Railway
- literature
- Robert C. Jones: Railroads of Vermont, Volume II. New England Press Inc., Shelburne, VT 1993. ISBN 978-1881535027 .
- Robert M. Lindsell: The Rail Lines of Northern New England. Branch Line Press, Pepperell, MA 2000, ISBN 0-942147-06-5 .
- Jim Shaughnessy: The Rutland Road. (2nd edition) Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, NY 1997, ISBN 0-8156-0469-6 .